Things that need to be added/changed here - add your suggestions

We have looked into this as Bob has previous said this option needs adding. For now I can provide a page for all the latest threads in the community:

community.sophos.com/.../latestthreads

...and one for just the Sophos UTM 9 group:

community.sophos.com/.../latestthreadsutm9

The default filter is set so that if you are logged in and read a thread it will disappear from the list.

It's not wasted at all - it's much needed so we steer the development of the community in the right direction. Thank you! I take all the comments (even bad ones) on board. However it's never too clear how to actually act on 'navigation sucks'. Therefore I am trying to get a usability report on the site done.

After some practical experience in using and participating in this new forum, here are my suggestions for improvements:

 - Everything on this forum is TOO LARGE. Including fonts, headings, titles, line spacing, buttons etc. Top frame header should also be compacted, it occupies 165px for almost no functionality (yes, I did measure it...:).

- When inserting a picture into the post why is it required to set its dimensions upfront? It should be automatically cropped to maximum defined width and height, if it is oversized. Otherwise, it should be presented in original size.

- Navigation is hard, as already mentioned here. Page numbers should be introduced in both top and bottom of the threads.

- Jumping into thread from the Community home page should be linked to the last post, not to the original one.

- There is no preview option before posting.

- Links embedded into a post should be opening in the new browser window.

- Email notifications are not working (at least for me).

- Online indicator was helpful on astaro.org to identify if the user is now online or not.

So far...

EDIT: Bulleted List in Rich Text formatting also doesn't work, I had to edit original post.

- Bulleted List in Rich Text formatting doesn't work

I'm not certain that all of these belong in this thread, but here they are:

Saveable settings for default notification view: I would prefer to see "unread" and not "all" by default - without extra/repeated clicks.

Saveable setting to see all responses and not only the designated answer by default. I want to see all posts without extra/repeated clicks.

Notification div-pop-up seems to disappear (frequently, but not always?) on middle click in Chrome.

Are there pages here like www.astaro.org/search.php?do=getdaily or www.astaro.org/search.php?do=getnew

How does this platform handle edited posts? I often missed information in the old forum as edited posts didn't show up as "new" if they were edited after I had already read them. I appreciate having edited posts marked and dated as such.

Edited: the software truncated the URLs displayed

Ruckus its not hard to see the difference in navigation. Simply look at the astaro.org site and compare navigation. Unless you work on a tablet or phone it is so much simpler to find info. Weed through what you dont want and find what you do want. So much more fits on the screen. So navigation sucks is much more than page numbers and arrow keys. It is want you can see at one time and digest. I can digest a whole page on my screen over there. You are forcing us to digest 10-25% of that on this forum. So until that is fixed navigation sucks. Again, we dont care about eye candy. We care about getting info and fixing issues quickly. I hope that makes it clearer if not I dont know what to say.

Still can't find my threads. Now two are missing. So how can I tell if they have been answered?

Ian M

Matt, "Navigation" - I've seen people asking for "last post" and "page #" buttons - do you have a different gripe?

Cheers - Bob

PS I saw that Matt already answered this. When I went to delete this post, I was surprised...

SUGGESTION: When a member deletes one of his/her own posts, no reason should be required.  If I, as a mod, delete someone else's post, then I should be required to give a reason.

For a very long time, we talked about transferring here all the gold we had in Astaro forum.

The first thing Sophos should have done - BEFOR opening this new forum - was to transfer all of it (or at least the last years) to this new place, run it for a while as beta, listen to our comments, and only then closing the old forum.
We all invest a lot of time on it!

As I learn in my life – nothing is impossible – if you have the will.
To be honest, I'm very skeptical about Sophos attention to do so.

Things to add/change:
1. Transfer all the users from the old forum.
We all are going back for a long time.
You can send a link, so we can keep our nickname, and just change the password.
It is also important, so we can manage our posts and continue our thread.
To be honest, I don’t feel like start all over again.

2. If it isn't broken – don't fix it.
Look at the way the old forum was organized.
It was organized that way because that the way the users liked it.
Much of the way it looked and organize was because of what we asked for.

3. Like it's been said, Right now we have only "Copernicus Beta" (hardly interesting), and "General".
Really???
That's all what was left from our previous glorious live forum of Astaro UTM?

4. As it used to be, if someone wrote in thread we participated, we got a notification about it in our mail.

5. In our profile, the red number should refer only to threads we participated (Right now – show all)

5. Post should be ranked and appear accordingly.

Bob:
Does any of you have a backup of the database from the Astaro Forum?
If somone so afraid of the security (For god sake – It's only a Forum!), maybe I can do something about it.

Ruckus:
1. " so we steer the development of the community in the right direction"
What is in sophos eyes "Right direction"?
2. "I take all the comments (even bad ones) on board."
Not sure what that mean, so please elaborate.
Who in sophos decide about it?
I really hope Sophos don’t' want a dead horse in here.

A lot of us stayed here out of loyalty.
Breaking this community, and I'm sure many of us will start looking around.
After all Sophos aren’t the only kids in town.
I don't think you meant it to come this way, but if Sophose would really listen to us from the beginning, People wouldn't feel totally deferent – and act deferent.
Right or wrong, for now, the way it looks like people here are quite negative, frustrated and suspicions, so the burden of proof is on Sophose.

I agree with most of the constructive feedback from people here. I also can relate to the frustration coming from some other users.

@ruckus : I appreciate your patience and the will to put this thing all together. But you have to understand that people that say that the navigation sucks are comparing it to ANY other forum like vbulletin or phpBB etc. I have also come to realize that you are the middle man between the devs/users/management. That role must suck I have to admit. So I will have to echo what goldy said

1. Since this white and blue color combo with large fonts and scattered posts is the universal community interface, how much UI change are we realistically expecting with all the feedback? Are you going to the management first then the devs?

2. Why are we reinventing everything? First with copernicus/SF-OS/XG and now with this board. Other people have done this and very successfully I might add. Why are you guys hell bent on giving it your own flavor? I don't mind the flavor aspect either, its the philosophy of recreating everything from scratch. If you have devs sitting around sipping coffee, send them to work on SF-OS. They really need help there.

3. As much as I appreciated the whole post that vilic wrote, it should have been already sorted out by the QC department. You guys are in security business as most of you like to brag so stay with security and quit reinventing forum software.

Please don't take this as negative criticism as I really think that you are trying to help but we need some kind of road map. From previous experience with sophos, it seems most of our feedback falls on deaf years.
Copernicus interface/ overall architecture - no one cared to fix it.
Astaro.org - Dead with no functional backups.
Sophos community website - Still taking feedback on functionality. The basic forum functions should have been sorted well before it became beta and now IS the face of SOPHOS community.

So, do you have any OFFICIAL timeline on when or if ANY of these changes will be implemented. I know in the other thread you had mentioned that the read-only astaro.org would have been back before it even went down but you had minor difficulties and we know how that turned out.

Sorry for the long rant
Regards
Bill

Edit: I will go even a step further. In your judgement, what is the realistic time frame that the very basic things that teched/ vilic outlined in their posts can be implemented into this forum. I mean deadlines... not vague references like next major version upgrade etc ;)